If Cell Starts with Text String… Formula

Question

I have formula that checks if the cell starts with text \"A\" returns Pick up \"B\" for Collect and C for Prepaid.

But it doesn\'t seems to be working properly

B

Answer 1

As of Excel 2019 you could do this. The "Error" at the end is the default.

SWITCH(LEFT(A1,1), "A", "Pick Up", "B", "Collect", "C", "Prepaid", "Error")

Microsoft Excel Switch Documentation

Answer 2

I'm not sure lookup is the right formula for this because of multiple arguments. Maybe hlookup or vlookup but these require you to have tables for values. A simple nested series of if does the trick for a small sample size

Try =IF(A1="a","pickup",IF(A1="b","collect",IF(A1="c","prepaid","")))

Now incorporate your left argument

=IF(LEFT(A1,1)="a","pickup",IF(LEFT(A1,1)="b","collect",IF(LEFT(A1,1)="c","prepaid","")))

Also note your usage of left, your argument doesn't specify the number of characters, but a set.

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7/8/15 - Microsoft KB articles for the above mentioned functions. I don't think there's anything wrong with techonthenet, but I rather link to official sources.

• lookup
• hlookup
• vlookup
• if
• left

Answer 3

I know this is a really old post, but I found it in searching for a solution to the same problem. I don't want a nested if-statement, and Switch is apparently newer than the version of Excel I'm using. I figured out what was going wrong with my code, so I figured I'd share here in case it helps someone else.

I remembered that VLOOKUP requires the source table to be sorted alphabetically/numerically for it to work. I was initially trying to do this...

=LOOKUP(LOWER(LEFT($T$3, 1)),  {"s","l","m"}, {-1,1,0})

and it started working when I did this...

=LOOKUP(LOWER(LEFT($T$3, 1)),  {"l","m","s"}, {1,0,-1})

I was initially thinking the last value might turn out to be a default, so I wanted the zero at the last place. That doesn't seem to be the behavior anyway, so I just put the possible matches in order, and it worked.

Edit: As a final note, I see that the example in the original post has letters in alphabetical order, but I imagine the real use case might have been different if the error was happening and the letters A, B, and C were just examples.